They'll Have Their
Song So Long As There're Enough Left For A Chorus!"
This preparation of the cable and anchors was for the passage
of the straits; for, being very crooked, and with a variety of
currents, it is necessary to come frequently to anchor.
This was
not, by any means, a pleasant prospect, for, of all the work that
a sailor is called upon to do in cold weather, there is none so
bad as working the ground-tackle. The heavy chain cables to be
hauled and pulled about the decks with bare hands; wet hawsers,
slip-ropes, and buoy-ropes to be hauled aboard, dripping in water,
which is running up your sleeves, and freezing; clearing hawse
under the bows; getting under weigh and coming-to, at all hours
of the night and day, and a constant look-out for rocks and sands
and turns of tides; - these are some of the disagreeables of such
a navigation to a common sailor. Fair or foul, he wants to have
nothing to do with the ground-tackle between port and port. One of
our hands, too, had unluckily fallen upon a half of an old newspaper
which contained an account of the passage, through the straits, of a
Boston brig, called, I think, the Peruvian, in which she lost every
cable and anchor she had, got aground twice, and arrived at
Valparaiso in distress. This was set off against the account of
the A. J. Donelson, and led us to look forward with less confidence
to the passage, especially as no one on board had ever been through,
and the captain had no very perfect charts.
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